I see an Easter egg as a sort of "finishing touch" - something added after everything else is done. Thus, if one occurs in software that appears to be buggy and/or unfinished, it definitely creates a bad impression for me, wheres if the software looks nearly perfect it has the opposite effect.

I somewhat agree - but given that no meaningful piece of software has ever shipped without bugs being punted (and bugs that weren't even known about), when is there really time to add an easter egg?

I agree with Easter Eggs in products. That being said another good example of an "Easter Egg gone wrong" was the games in Excel 95 and 97.

Excel 95 had a "Doom"-like 3D game. Excel 97 had a basic flight simulator. These were fun and weren't buggy, but here's the problem:

How much time do you think was lost in classrooms in particular after all the kids discovered there were games they could be playing instead of working? All of the built in Windows games were removed, and Flash/Java weren't installed. But you cannot remove these if you need Excel.

This was a legitimate issue in the 1990s. So much so that the school I attended gave anyone detention caught playing these games during class time(!). Yet every class there would be someone sitting in the corner playing away.

I find it hilarious that you're upset with easter eggs in principle because kids were distracted during class. I'm sure all those kids couldn't hack it in the real world because of these awful distractions.

> I find it hilarious that you're upset with easter eggs in principle because kids were distracted during class.

That's exactly the opposite of what I said, I said I liked Easter Eggs in principle but then gave an example of when they went wrong. The first line of my comment was: "I agree with Easter Eggs in products."

Easter Eggs are good, you just really have to consider the impact they're going to have (in terms of perception, usages, and bugs).

Perhaps it is not microsofts responsibility to ensure kids are always hard at work.